The Climate Roundup 12.4.22

Hey climate heroes! Welcome to The Climate Roundup, where we round up the change, er the news about climate and the environment. As part of the Gen E community, we thank you for making climate action part of everyday life. (Reading this newsletter counts!)

In Pop Culture:

Riz Ahmed and Jordan Peele have just signed on to a climate-themed horror short called Moshari. The film’s logline is, “The end of the world forces two sisters together, inside a mosquito net, just to survive — but first they must survive each other.” According to the film’s website, “moshari” are traditional mosquito nets from South Asia, and the film is about vermin that have grown out of control due to environmental catastrophe. That all sounds great, but you had me at Riz Ahmed.

GETTING DOWN TO CLIMATE BUSINESS:

💰️ Prince William announced the five winners of his Earthshot Award, a prize given for innovative solutions for climate change and biodiversity loss. The £1 million prize is named after JFK’s Moon Shot challenge to get an American on the moon before the end of the decade. This year’s Earthshot honorees won for developing seaweed-based plastic alternatives, monitoring the Great Barrier Reef, turning CO2 into rock, supplying cleaner stoves to women in Kenya, and building sustainable greenhouses in India. Still no award for me writing a weekly newsletter, but maybe next year.

🌋 A volcanic eruption at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa has cut off power to the longest-running equipment measuring atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. This equipment has been measuring climate change for 60 years, and its placement on Mauna Loa was ideal for the task because of its distance from pollution sources. Scientists believe they’ll be able to get the equipment up and running again, but it might take months. Sounds like they’re using my mechanic. Pete? In Tujunga?

🧴 Over 2000 experts assembled by the United Nations completed their first week of negotiations over a new plastic treaty. The group included delegates from over 150 countries, environmentalists, scientists, waste-pickers, and…. plastic industry representatives. Hmm. That feels a little like inviting a coyote to the chicken negotiations.

👶️ If you hang out on the internet as much as I do, you’ve probably seen certain climate advocates argue that if you care about the environment, you shouldn’t have kids. But according to the Washington Post, the data that supports that belief is “relatively slim.” The main basis for the argument against reproducing was a 2009 study that took into consideration not only your child’s emissions, but their child’s emissions, and their child’s emissions, and so on. But it also assumes that we don’t decarbonize in the lives of any of those children. In fact, “If the US meets its climate goals, the carbon footprint of having a child plummets.” So if your biological clock is ticking, don’t hold off just because of the climate. Plus, you can use decarbonizing as an excuse to get out of all kinds of kids stuff. “Sorry sweetheart, we can’t go to Chuck E. Cheese. Because of emissions.”

⚽ The World Cup has highlighted host country Qatar’s vulnerability to climate change, with daily temperatures roughly 5-10 degrees higher than the historical average. In the Middle East, temperatures are rising twice as fast as the rest of the world. Well, at least Qatar isn’t famous for using migrant workers and subjecting them to horrible inhumane conditions. Now to take a big sip of coffee and Google how they built the World Cup stadium.

🚰 The Colorado River drought continues to worsen. This year, the Biden administration has called on the seven Colorado River Basin states to cut water consumption by about one third of the river’s total flow, with some officials fearing “a complete doomsday scenario.” Yikes. I was hoping our complete doomsday scenario would involve Godzilla or a kaiju of some kind, but if water levels are sinking, they don’t even have anywhere to live anymore.

SOME STATS:

30,000: THE NUMBER OF CLIMATE REFUGEES THAT FLED OVER THE CAMEROON-CHAD BORDER IN JUST A FEW DAYS (NPR)

1200: THE NUMBER OF CLIMATE CHANGE SCENARIOS EXPERTS USED TO CALCULATE THE BEST WAY TO STAY UNDER 1.5 (WAPO)

Eat Your Leftovers

PBS just released this video about food waste’s contributions to climate change and what’s being done about it. Personally, I’m addressing the problem by having a 90 pound dog who loves to sneak food out of the trash while I’m sleeping.

Thanks for reading! – Nicole